“I think, effectively, you have a company that has conspired with about a billion consumers and technology to destroy brands,” argued Scott Galloway, a founder of business research firm now called Gartner L2 and a professor of marketing at New York University Stern School of Business, in a presentation last year. “Their attitude is that brands have, for a long time, earned an unearned price premium that screws consumers.”
While the marketplace infrastructure has many advantages, it’s important to remember that it can cut both ways. Marketplaces don’t exist to help you, but to help themselves. They want the focus to be on the products, not the sellers. And that means they might restrict the degree to which you can brand your presence, communicate with customers, dictate what items you can and cannot sell, and so on.
Promising review: "My oldest son put this game on his Christmas wishlist. Knowing nothing about it, I purchased it; I was overjoyed that he was asking for something that didn't require batteries or wasn't a video game. Now, I realize I'm going to be judged as a bad parent for purchasing this game and for not doing more research before giving it to my teenage son. I accept that. However, this game is so funny. My husband and I have played it with our son quite a few times and it made us all sit together and just laugh so hard that we snort and end up having some very interesting conversations. Yes, the game is politically incorrect and does have some sexual content, but so does everything on TV and on the internet these days. Anything that keeps my teenager talking to me and feeling comfortable speaking with us about odd or uncomfortable things is a win in my parenting handbook." —Chrysswen

In a similar vein, Amazon recently started promoting its private-label brands on the pages of competing brands. The complaint some brands made here is that Amazon is getting that advertising space ‘for free.’ But ad space on a highly trafficked site like Amazon is never free. By allocating that space to promote one of its own products, Amazon is by default forfeiting ad dollars from advertisers. Given Amazon’s booming advertising business and how profitable this new division is, Amazon would not be giving up valuable ad space lightly.

All product images must meet Amazon site-wide image standards as well as Jewelry-specific standards. Sellers must review and follow the image guidelines published on Seller Central, and all images must conform to the guidelines. For more information regarding image requirements and listing practices, please download the Jewelry Category Style Guide.
Indeed, Amazon casts a long shadow over a number of industries. Grocery stocks plunged when the company acquired Whole Foods Market last year. Walgreens (NASDAQ:WBA) and CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) fell when the company acquired PillPack this summer, and an eventual entry by Amazon into the pharmacy space still hangs over the sector. The 2016 launch of Amazon Prints sent Shutterfly (NASDAQ:SFLY) down 12%.
Social commerce is heating up as Instagram launches Shopping tags in Stories and a dedicated Shopping channel in Explore, while Pinterest opens up Shop the Look pins and hits 250 million monthly users. The feature should mesh well with Snap’s young and culture-obsessed audience. In the U.S., its users are 20 percent more likely to have made a mobile purchase than non-users, and 60 percent more likely to make impulse purchases according to studies by Murphy Research and GfK.
In October 2016, Amazon Music released a music streaming service called "Amazon Music Unlimited."[121] Unlike Prime Music with its somewhat limited catalog, this stand-alone music streaming service has "tens of millions"[122] of songs and is intended to compete with music streaming leaders such as Spotify and Pandora Radio. It has a similar price structure, albeit with a $2/month discount for Amazon Prime members.
Imperiled families are popular forms of community in documentaries this year—on the more heartwarming side is Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, the deceptively straightforward new film from Hoop Dreams director Steve James. In it, James details the ordeal of the Sungs, who ran the only bank to face federal prosecution in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse. What’s even more surprising is that their bank, Abacus Federal Savings, was a tiny, local institution catering to New York City’s Chinatown residents—hardly one of the massive financial corporations that helped crater the world economy. There is a happy ending to Abacus’s legal nightmare, however, but James uses the court case as a means to explore the Sung family, particularly patriarch Thomas Sung, who even in his late 70s still elicits a strong hold over his adult daughters, who help run the bank with him while jockeying to curry his favor. Abacus is a family portrait mixed with current events, and if it’s less ambitious than Hoop Dreams that doesn’t diminish the warmth and subtlety James brings to this look at an anxious, close-knit clan who rally around one another once the government goes after them. —Tim Grierson
This is why any kung fu fan will always love Gordon Liu. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is as classic as it gets: the definitive Shaolin movie, without a doubt, and the source of Liu’s nickname, “Master Killer.” He plays San Te, a young student wounded when his school is culled by the Manchu government, so he flees to the refuge of the Shaolin temple. After toiling as a laborer, he finally earns the right to learn kung fu, which begins the film’s famous training sequences. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is the rare film where those training sequences actually outshine its traditional fights, because they’re just so beautiful, fluid and inventive. In each of the 36 chambers, San Te must toil to discipline his body, mind, reflexes and will. They make up the whole center of the film, and are unforgettable, bearing an iconic gravitas, imbuing kung fu with a great dignity. Because true kung fu can only be attained through the greatest of sacrifice. —Jim Vorel
Customers who are guests of another membership aren't eligible for the following benefits unless they are eligible through their Amazon Household: membership sharing, Kindle Owners' Lending Library, Prime Video, Prime Music, and shopping discounts provided by Amazon Family such as 20% off diapers and 15% Baby Registry Completion discount. Customers who are guests of another membership aren't eligible for Prime Photos.
Feedvisor: Very expensive algorithmic repricer that optimizes your margin by trying to win the Buy Box most of the time and takes into account other factors that affect who wins the Buy Box aside from price. Unlike any other repricer, it will raise your price (again, within limits) if you can still win the Buy Box despite the higher price. It also has a bunch of other great reporting and tools.
If you’re a vinyl record collector, we offer a wide selection of easily searchable LPs so you can get the best of Bob Dylan and David Bowie or the latest from Nine Inch Nails. We also offer a huge selection of CDs and MP3s. And if that wasn’t enough, we also offer a music trade-in program that can help you turn your eligible albums into Amazon.com gift cards. With other programs like our Live at Amazon series, Best of the Year, Artists on Tour, free tunes from new artists, and a huge selection of music deals, you can explore new and chart-topping favorites.

While our survey has long shown seasonal fluctuations in Prime membership levels, we have now seen four months of—at best—flatlining membership rates. Moreover, in July last year, Prime Day prompted a month-over-month increase in membership numbers, but this year we saw no such jump. This August, the proportion of consumers we recorded holding a Prime membership was the lowest we had seen in a year.

"Can't say enough great things about this cast iron skillet. It heats evenly and consistently on the stove top, and has zero issues with tossing it directly in the oven or broiler. I use it for roasted chicken, bacon, roasted potatoes, frittatas, eggs, steak, and sauteing veggies. It's also super easy to clean, which is something that scares people away from cooking with cast iron. It's also on Prime." — Stephanie Asymkos
Close to two-thirds of Americans now say they've bought something on Amazon, according to a new NPR/Marist poll. That is 92 percent of America's online shoppers — which is to say, almost all of them. More than 40 percent say they buy something on Amazon once a month or more often. In fact, when people shop online, they're most likely to start on Amazon.
In August 2005,[82] Amazon began selling products under its own private label, "Pinzon"; the trademark applications indicated that the label would be used for textiles, kitchen utensils, and other household goods.[82] In March 2007, the company applied to expand the trademark to cover a more diverse list of goods and to register a new design consisting of the "word PINZON in stylized letters with a notched letter "O" which appears at the "one o'clock" position".[83] Coverage by the trademark grew to include items such as paints, carpets, wallpaper, hair accessories, clothing, footwear, headgear, cleaning products, and jewelry.[83] In September 2008, Amazon filed to have the name registered. USPTO has finished its review of the application, but Amazon has yet to receive an official registration for the name.

Just a few weeks earlier, The Capitol Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based news service that examines business and regulation, published a story arguing Amazon risked antitrust enforcement by the Trump administration for using its algorithms and platform to promote its own products over “those of merchants that are dependent on Amazon’s platform and with whom Amazon competes.”

A.: Yes. Just visit Amazon Prime's gifting page, add it to your cart and follow the instructions to find out how you can give a yearlong subscription to a friend or family member. In your cart, before you check out, just make sure that the box reading "This item is a gift" is checked off, and you can fill in the rest of the information when you pay.
Seems like for Prime membership, you should have access to more titles than are available. Often I get blurred/ pixelated video for several minutes, with great internet speed. For those reasons I often find myself using another service where I don’t have those issues. However, on iPad, I do like the ability to easily backup or move forward 10 secs at a time. Quickly click 3 times on the left side of the screen and it goes back 30 secs. 6 times, it jumps back a minute. Awesome feature. I also enjoy the commentary/trivia notes about the show during filming or background on the choices made... these include actors, continuity issues, places, etc. The notes are tied to the associated frames when you tap the screen while playing OR you can view the list of notes and click to jump to that section in the movie.

European regulators are closely watching how Amazon uses its own sales data to potentially gain an unfair advantage over marketplace sellers. Margrethe Vestager, the EU commissioner for competition, recently said that, while there are no accusations against Amazon at this point, her department has started a "preliminary investigation" into how the company may be copying best-selling products by competitors.
Some 11% of the Amazon apparel shoppers we surveyed said that they had bought Amazon private-label goods in the past year, which is notable because those private-label lines are still relatively new. Our survey provided respondents with several examples of Amazon’s private labels, in order to minimize any confusion about the company’s own private labels versus other brands featured on Amazon that respondents may not have been familiar with.
Prime Music is a Spotify/Google Play Music competitor that offer a library of millions of songs to Amazon Prime members at no added cost. Amazon Prime members can stream and download music for free. Prime has a collection of over 2 million songs available for download without advertisements. Consumers who need a larger music library can subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited with over 10 million songs for $7.99 and $9.99 for non-Prime members.
Amazon's rules state that you must be at least 13 years of age to sign up for an account. However, you must be 18 to make a purchase (since you'll need to input this data into your account before a purchase), unless you can obtain enough money in gift card funds to pay for the purchase or receive a gift card-debit card that has a major card company attached that you can input to pay for the entire purchase price.
In August 2013, Amazon launched Amazon Art as an online marketplace selling original and limited edition fine art from selected galleries.[73] The initial 40000 items listed for sale included Norman Rockwell's painting Willie Gillis: Package from Home priced at $4.85 million, L'Enfant a la tasse by Claude Monet for $1.45 million and Andy Warhol's Sachiko for $45 000.[74]